Tracii Guns has long slung his Les Paul in bouts of rock ’n’ roll excess as a longtime hair-metal icon with his namesake band, LA Guns. But lately he’s been branching out through several side gigs, one of which features Jack Russell of Great White. Tracii joins us to dig into the tones behind his latest collaborative record (and beyond), .
“That record was really weird because, number one, I didn’t initially write anything. And number two, they [Frontiers Records] leaked the songs over to me one at a time. So I never had an overall picture of what I thought that record would sound like; it was like hors d’oeuvres, like, ‘Here’s an appetizer, now go create the main course.
’ “But the good thing was that HeadRush had just come out with the [guitar effects and ], and I was really excited about it. So with each song I made a new patch, as each song sounded, to me, different. For example, on the single that came out, , you can tell it’s a .
But on other tracks, I used my Black Beauty Les Paul. It was a varied approach.” “It’s a lot of stuff.
But as I’m writing music, the HeadRush thing has become so important, you know? Especially during the pandemic – I’d write something and be like, ‘Oh, this needs to be a Joe Perry thing,’ or maybe I’d say, ‘Ah, this sounds more like Randy Rhoads or Dave Murray.’ “The luxury of the HeadRush is that it locks in vintage stuff, like a Soldano or so many different sounds for a rhythm track, for example. .
